Adrian
The phone buzzes against the polished surface of the table. A single, insistent vibration. I don’t need to look at the screen. Only one person summons me this way.
I answer before the second buzz.
“Yes.”
“My office. Now.” Marcus’s voice is a shard of ice. The line goes dead.
Twenty minutes later, I stand before his desk. It’s a vast expanse of mahogany, a reflection of the man himself. Imposing, dark, and clear of any clutter. Marcus hates mess. And I brought him one.
He doesn’t look up from the tablet in his hands. He lets the silence stretch, a familiar tactic. He wants me to squirm. To fill the quiet with excuses. I don’t.
Finally, he slides the tablet across the desk. On the screen is an article. The headline is bold, aggressive. ‘Thorne Corp Cleanup: A Whistleblower’s Warning?’ Below it, a picture of Elias Vance, an independent journalist with a reputation for sinking his teeth into stories the mainstream media won’t touch.
“Explain this to me, Adrian.” His voice is dangerously calm.
I scan the article. It’s mostly speculation, but it’s sharp. It quotes an anonymous tip. ‘Alley off Corbin Street. A man in a cheap suit never clocked out.’ It mentions our organization by name. A direct hit. A stone thrown with perfect aim.
“A leak,” I state. The word tastes like ash.
“A leak.” Marcus repeats the word, savoring the sound of my failure. “A leak implies a small crack. This is a gaping wound, Adrian. It went to Elias Vance. It names us. This is not some low level street dealer with a grudge. This is precise.”
He stands, his movements slow and deliberate. He walks to the window that overlooks the city. The same view as the girl’s, but from a different, more powerful angle.
“I give you a simple task. A sanitation. It should have been invisible. Instead, I’m reading about it on the internet while I drink my morning coffee.”
“I’m handling it.”
“Are you?” He turns, and his eyes pin me in place. They are a colder, harder version of my own. “This happened on your watch. Under your supervision. And it happened right after you decided to bring a civilian into one of my properties.”
The accusation hangs there, glittering and sharp.
“She’s secure,” I say, my voice a flat line. “Contained. She has no access to the outside world.”
“And yet the outside world seems to know our business.” He walks back to his desk, but doesn’t sit. He leans against it, an apex predator at rest. “Find it. Find who sent this. And you silence them. Permanently. I don’t care who it is. One of your men. One of my accountants. An old friend. You find them, and you erase them. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“And Adrian.” He picks up a heavy crystal paperweight, testing its heft in his palm. “This mistake is yours to fix. Don’t make me fix it for you. You know how I dislike cleaning up other people’s messes.”
The threat is veiled, but it lands like a punch. He’s reminding me of my place. Of the debt he believes I owe him.
“It will be handled,” I say.
He nods, dismissing me. I turn and walk out, the weight of his command pressing down on me. I am now hunting the leak. I am hunting the woman I am holding captive.
Leo is waiting for me in the hallway. His smirk is a slash of victory on his face.
“Trouble in paradise, Ghost?” he asks, falling into step beside me.
“Go back to your desk, Leo.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Marcus just read me in. I’m to ‘assist’ you in your investigation.” He practically purrs the words. “Funny, isn’t it? I seem to recall telling you that the coffee girl was a liability. I told you to snip the loose end. But you knew better, didn’t you? You and your ‘assets’.”
We step into the elevator. The doors slide shut, encasing us in a mirrored box. Leo checks his reflection, adjusting the knot of his silk tie.
“So, what’s the first move, boss? Are we going to go shake down your new pet? Maybe she had a secret phone tucked in her shoe. We could strip search her. I’d be happy to volunteer.”
My hand clenches into a fist at my side. I imagine the sound of his nose breaking. “You will stay away from her.”
“Protective. I like it.” He laughs, a hollow sound in the small space. “This is on you, Adrian. The old man sees it. I see it. You brought this mess home, and now it’s starting to stink. When this all goes south, I’m going to be there to watch him cut you loose.”
The elevator dings. The doors open. “Your assistance is not required,” I say, stepping out.
“It’s not a request,” he calls after me. “It’s an order. From Marcus.”
I don’t look back.
I drive. My mind is a whirlwind of possibilities, all of them bad. I play it out like a professional. Who had access? Who had motive? I go through the names of my team, the clean up crew. Loyal. Professional. None of them would risk this.
But the words of the tip. Precise. ‘Thorne corporation.’ It’s a detail someone outside the inner circle might not use. They’d say Marcus. Or the family. The wording is… clinical. Deliberate.
My car pulls into the underground garage of her tower. I tell myself I am here to investigate. To look for the hole in my security. To search her things again, more thoroughly this time.
It’s a lie.
I need to see her. I need to look in her eyes and see if she is the one setting fire to my world.
I let myself into the apartment. The silence greets me, as always. But it’s different this time. It’s charged. Electric.
I find her in the living room. She’s not looking at the view. She’s watching the television.
On the screen, Elias Vance is being interviewed. A chyron at the bottom of the screen reads: ‘THE CORBIN STREET MURDER: CORPORATE HIT?’
She doesn’t turn as I enter. She knows I’m here. I can see the rigid line of her shoulders.
I walk to stand beside her, our reflections pale ghosts in the dark glass of the window. On the screen, Vance is speaking, his voice earnest and intense.
“…this anonymous source has provided details that suggest a level of professionalism and organization far beyond typical street crime. The question we should all be asking is, who has the resources to commit a murder and then sanitize the scene so effectively it’s barely a whisper on the police blotter? And why are they trying to silence the story?”
I watch her face. Her expression is a perfect mask of detached curiosity. But her knuckles are white where she grips the arm of the sofa.
“It seems you have a new favorite show,” I say. My voice is quiet.
She turns her head to look at me. Her whiskey colored eyes are unreadable. “It’s better than the cooking channels. More drama.”
That spark. That flicker of defiance I saw in the alley. It’s not a flicker anymore. It’s a steady flame.
“A leak in the organization,” I say, watching her for any reaction. “Someone is talking.”
“Is that what this is about?” she asks, a brow arching slightly. “Someone got careless.”
“This isn’t carelessness. This is a declaration of war.”
“And you’re the soldier they send to fight it.” It’s not a question. It’s an observation. She’s studying me. Seeing me in a way no one else does. Not as a boss, not as a rival. But as a piece on a board.
I see the stress reflected in her eyes. Not her stress. Mine. She can see it. She can see the cracks forming in the stoic facade. The pressure from Marcus, the insubordination from Leo, the impossible task of hunting a ghost that might be standing right in front of me.
“Did you have a phone I missed, Clara?” I ask, the question blunt. “A smart watch? Anything at all you forgot to mention?”
She meets my gaze without flinching. “You took my bag. You took my camera. You strip search people, right? Your friend Leo seems eager to volunteer. If I had a phone, don’t you think you would have found it by now?”
She’s good. She turns the question back on me, makes it about my incompetence, not her guilt. But there’s a tremor in her voice. So faint, I almost miss it. A vibration of fear, or maybe exhilaration.
I see it then. The mix of terror and empowerment twisting inside her. She is a prisoner in a cage of my making, watching the world react to a bomb she planted. She’s terrified of being caught, but she’s high on the power of it. The ‘coffee girl’ is making kings tremble.
“Someone wants to see my world burn,” I say, more to myself than to her.
“Maybe it deserves to,” she replies, her voice barely a whisper.
We stand there in silence, the news anchor’s voice a meaningless drone in the background. The dynamic between us has shifted. I am the captor, but I am no longer the only one in control. She has a weapon, and she has used it. She has brought the war inside these walls. I look at her, this girl who makes coffee and films decaying cityscapes, and I see the most dangerous person I have ever met.
I am supposed to find the leak. I am supposed to silence them. Permanently.
But as I look at her, I know with a chilling certainty that I am not hunting a stranger. I am hunting her. And I have no idea what I’m going to do when I finally prove it.
